History of Text Technologies (HoTT)

From Cave Paintings to Personal Computers

Socrates, Shakespeare, Saint Paul, Rembrandt, Sappho, Darwin, Beethoven, Jane Austen,
Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Billie Holiday are all dead. We
remember them because their words and works were preserved for later generations by means
of different text technologies. Texts are material artifacts that take many different
forms: cave paintings, tattoos, stone tablets, clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, manuscript
books, musical scores, maps, printed books, engravings, newspapers, photographs, films,
DVDs, computers. Every kind of text is produced by a special technology, but all those
technologies share a simple purpose: they were designed to supplement the fragile human
mind by providing a more durable artificial memory system. Those technologically preserved
and transmitted memories are the foundation of all human culture.

HoTT Community

Looking at human cultural achievements in this way overcomes many of the entrenched
obstacles of national boundaries, languages, and academic departments. Technologies are
not limited to nations or languages: they invade and transform cultures. The Hebrew and
Greek Bible, the literary and philosophical masterpieces of classical antiquity,
influenced readers (like Dante and Chaucer) thousands of years and thousands of miles away
from the time and place when they were first written down. The same print technology that
circulated the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus and Galileo throughout Europe also
circulated the works of Cervantes and Montaigne.

HoTT @ FSU

History of Text Technologies at Florida State University is an interdisciplinary
certificate program which combines studies in the history of the book and media cultures.
The curriculum explores the changing material and aesthetic technologies of cultural
transmission in scribal, print, visual, and digital forms. By taking an expansive view of
“text technologies” and their cultural agency, the HoTT program opens conventional textual
studies and book history to the insights of cross-disciplinary, trans-historical,
trans-national perspectives. Comprised of faculty from a broad range of academic
departments, the HoTT program offers students immersion in the historical study of text
and visual technologies from manuscript cultures to the digital present.

HoTT aims to promote an active interdisciplinary community at the university, in its
classrooms, and across its faculty’s research fields. Interdisciplinary programs are
available for graduate students and undergraduates interested in critical study and
research projects in textual materials and cultural transmission. HoTT also sponsors a
variety of colloquia, lectures, and events for faculty and students. In addition to their
own research, HoTT faculty are pioneering a book series in collaboration with
Palgrave.

¶ Pathways of Excellence

The History of Text Technologies Program is made possible by the continuing support of Pathways of Excellence, an ongoing Florida State
University initiative designed to enhance the academic community‘s standing as one of the
nation's essential research and graduate education institutions.